The present invention relates in general to bagging machines, and, more particularly, to automatic garment bagging machines.
In many industries, particularly in the manufacture of new garments, garments are enclosed in a bag of plastic-type material before being given to a customer.
The bags are generally formed from lengths of flexible material which is stored on a reel and withdrawn as required. The bag must be severed from the web of flexible material and sealed about the garment. Often such steps are partially, or wholly, performed by hand. Hand operations during a bagging step are time consuming and wasteful.
A further drawback to presently known devices is the inefficient manner in which the bags are sealed. The known devices use hot pins to melt the flexible material and thus weld the material layers together. Melting plastic using hot pins generates smoke and odors and produces carbon which builds up on the pins. The carbon and plastic thus eventually builds up on the pins to a level which makes those pins unusable. At this point, the pins must be cleaned or replaced which requires machine downtime and is thus expensive. Such pin cleaning and/or replacement is also costly in terms of labor, materials and the like. Therefore, a bagging machine which avoids the problems associated with hot pin bag sealing elements will represent an advance in the art.
Yet another drawback to presently known bagging machines is the high power consumption thereof. These machines often require 20 to 30 amps and 220 volts to operate. Such high power consumption is costly and wasteful. Thus, there is need for a bagging machine which has low power requirements (less than 10 amps at 110 volts).
Still another drawback to presently known bagging machines is the non-self-adjusting nature thereof. Thus, any misalignment of the garment with respect to the machine elements, or the machine elements with respect to each other, may create serious problems and even require shutdown of the machine, which, as above-discussed, is expensive.
Thus, there is need for a garment bagging machine which is fully automatic and which is efficient and reliable in operation.